2A: 1E




The world grows quiet.







I lift the glowing rock into my line of sight.

In it, I see.

Another secret one.

The Nameless One.


































Wait… that wasn’t it.








“I knew I would find you here.”



...



Something’s not right.

---

2B: Find What's Right

“You seem different,” she states, as if she wasn’t responsible.


Moonlight skips across dew-coated evergreen leaves.


Moonlight skips across dew-coated evergreen leaves. It sidesteps the reaching arms of the deciduous vanguard, casting ominous shadows across the muddy battlefield in the centre of the woods. In the distance, the creatures still called to one another, singing of a war that has yet to be fully realised. They plead with me to pick up the sword and fight for them. With naught but a rock as a weapon, celestial as it may be, I resist.

Today's opponent comes bedecked in the armour of secrecy. It wraps taut around her portly frame. A lunar crown frames her temples, blinding the features of a face that feels both familiar and unknown at the same time. Her hands hide behind her back, obscuring her own choice of weapon.

"Oh my, how you've grown." I hear her smile, and it whips up the wind around me. Dead leaves somersault around me in a dazzling display of resurrection. The wind commands them so. It's power looms over me, drowning out the voices of the dark and the light that lie just beyond the shadows’ reach. As quickly as the wind ushers the voices in, it wicks them away.

She steps forward. I take an equal step back. The ground slops and slips under my feet. Under hers, silence. She steps again. Her foot falls in a melted puddle - a perfect circle inside another perfect circle. The muddy water refuses to ripple. Her feet don't touch it. She floats.

"I want you to know how proud I am of you." Her voice exerts a dubious sincerity. The otherworldly light rearranges itself in around her head. The crown disintegrates. A further step and the light transfigures. Not a crown. A halo.

My Angel.

The glow of the heavens illuminates the worst of her features: sullen eyes; three chins; a stray, yellow tooth protruding over her bottom lip. Further, a greasy wart dominates the tip of her nose. Wonky Wart returns.


The shadows play behind her.


The shadows play behind her. They flap in the rushing wind like the dark wings of a raven. Beautifully foreboding.


"Do not fret," she tells me, calm and confident. I believe her.


"We're here for the same thing, child." Her eyes paint targets on my hands and the treasure I hide within. I squeeze tight to my cosmic MacGuffin. Blistered skin bristles.

“I…” I stammer. “I found it.”

"Of course you did," she sweetly says. "But now it’s time to give it to me."

“I don’t want to.” I withdraw. She closes the gap.

“You poor, poor child.” She raises a ragged hand to my head and brushes a dirtied strand of hair from my face, tucking it behind my ears. “You’re sick. I can treat you. I can make you better. Then you’ll understand.”

Angel. Treatment. Doctor. I remember.

In a flash, her hand flicks out from behind her back. She reveals her weapon: a pen-sized flashlight.


“Sit down, my dear,” she gently commands. “You used to like your treatments.”

“Yes,” I obey.

“Say ‘aah’”. With a popsicle stick that materialised from thin air, she forces my mouth open and presses my tongue down. Not too hard, not too soft, she presses just right. Always right. She shines the flashlight into my mouth and between knowing ‘mmhmms’ and ‘ah has’, she reminisces. “I remember our first session. You opened up so much that day. You told me about your relationship with Wally; how you were in Love; and how you fell apart when the doctors took him away.”

“Yes,” I repeat, as she flicks the flashlight off. She pats me on the cheek. Her hand is warm. I want it.


She slides to my side and flicks on the light from the otoscope.


She tugs on my ear, straightening my ear canal.


“The second time we met, you opened up so much!” she continues. “The honesty you showed when you told me about how you killed that young girl, Hannah.”


“That’s when I knew we had a breakthrough!” she exclaims, ignoring my pleas.


“The puppets helped too,” she pushes on. “That’s how I convinced the others you were special. That you were opening up in a way that was completely out of the ordinary for someone with your… profile. That’s when they began to take notice.”


“No!” I screamed.

“I beg your pardon?” she snaps. “We won’t tolerate any sort of backchat here!”

“Yes ma’am,” I submit as the world melts away. The forest is sucked backwards; the ground falls away; and the sky stretches into a sphere, enveloping the two of us.


I balance on stars in the void.

She continues to float.

“I’m sorry I grew angry,” her voice ricochets off galaxies. “I know it should be expected that one with such gifts as yourself may relapse from time to time, but I need you to push through it. You’ve done it before, after all. Though the puppets were such a breakthrough, you then fell back into your old habits of blaming everyone else and even pretending to be them!”


“We recovered though,” she soothingly breathed. With a thwap, a green latex glove secured itself over her hand. “That next session represented a whole new world. A whole new path for you! Your mother… she should never have touched you like that.”

“Never,” I agreed.


“As a means of escape, you retreated into your fantasy,” she resumed. I let her. “You created this entire fictional world where Santa needed you to save Christmas.”


I bent over with my pants around my ankles, not knowing how they got there. I heard a squelch. Turning my head, I saw my Angel Doc applied lubrication to her gloved finger. My own gloved hand tingled. She placed a hand on the small of my back.


I pulled my pants up.

My right hand is my left.

My Angel was perturbed. Above my head a crack appears in the inverted sphere of the universe. The latex glove dematerialises and vanishes through the crack. A small drop of lube falls towards the bottom of space and time, but is similarly sucked out of existence before it can splotch upon the year 2045 and prevent Lux from ever inhabiting Corey Smith’s body, therefore damaging Corey’s future in such a way that my Valentine’s Day plans would be ruined.

“This fantasy world continues I see.” Disappointedly, she shakes her head. She presses again with bass in her voice. “You’ve filled it with delusions of dark and light. You’ve made yourself some sort of victim… some sort of hero. A martyr.”


I look down. It’s… ungloved and undamaged.

“You think that the world is ending and only you can stop it,” she taunts. No, not taunts.


“You need help,” she definitely states. Her heel sternly presses into the fabric of reality.


I turn to face her.


My truth seeps through the crack in existence.

She doesn’t know.

He does.

“You were in Italy.” I know too. Her eyes widen at the realisation. “You were in the library; you were outside the gelateria; you’ve been following me.”

“Such wonderful stories you…” I interrupt her, lifting the treasure she forgot about in my right hand - the cosmos that she skipped. I bring the transient rock to her vision. Her weapons may change, but I remember mine! I am stable.

She retreats before its glow! I push on! I feel the universe bending to my will!

She recoils.


I fucking threw it.

It misses her.

She was never my target.

It hits the timestream and kills the dinosaurs.

I killed the dinosaurs!

And with it, the sphere collapses. Iridium litters the world and space and time are rendered to nothing. Meaningless like dark and light.

Zip.

My feet land on soft but steady ground. The forest wraps around us once again. The sky… oh the sky! It falls back into place with beauty and grace.

She stares at me, exposed.

But armed.

In her hand, she holds a dagger. She twirls it, displaying the sigils emblazoned upon the hilt. On one side, a cross. On the other, an upside-down pentagram.

My hand burns. My eyes flash.




























I don’t falter. Not this time.

My right hand is my left.


I stroke my now re-gloved hand, and square up against my foe.


I have the dagger.

“...How?...” she wonders.


She screams.

---

2C: Go!

Through the woods I run. The creatures reach out to me but I shrug them off. I have what I came for. My truth; my treasure; the dagger.

I dodge vines and whips, and flames and names, nothing dares stop me!

The light ones squeal for help. The dark ones demand I comply. I. Keep. Running.

It all fades away.

Forever I go.

Leaping the last hurdle, I emerge on the side of the road. Freedom embraces me and I fall. I don’t care - Earth take me!

I look up. Yellow breadcrumbs raise their hands on the dusty path.


My eyes light up! I crawl, then I scramble, then I stumble, then I walk, then I run.

Again, go!

I follow the breadcrumbs. My feet kick up a sandstorm behind me. I race until I see it. The GMC 3100 that brought me out here.


Bump.

Panting, I slam into the side of the tray of my ride. It exists! Using the truck to prop me up, I scan out across the bay.

I see nothing.

Through nothing, I try to see.



“Raise the left hand,” the voice calls.

“Fuck off,” I reply.

It does as I command.


A clubbing mitt claps my shoulder. The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur huffs a hello.

I show him the dagger.

He knows.

Together we scan the nothing.



...



Nothing...



…




Nothing…




An excellent flare tracks across the sky, carrying the past and promising the future.

The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur takes the dagger from me and goes back to his map.

Studying it, he plots our next path.

2D: Context is King

“Look at my smile, Reggie.”

I smile.

“Look at how sad it looks. Your words, right?”

I shake my head. People always forget their own words.

“Look at my championship, Reggie.”

I lift the pathetic Federweight championship into view.

“Look at how my feeble attempts at Tula worked out. Your words, right?”

I lower the belt.

“People always forget their own words. You’ve got a case of the Thaddeus Dukes, don’t you? How did it come to be that the men holding the two top singles championships in the XWF have the same knack for falling over themselves. You at least had the decency to acknowledge that taking this belt was something your thuggish pals couldn’t do, but you seemed to have forgotten what you had already said!

‘Feeble.’

That sure describes one of us.

Feeble. Small-minded. Inconsiderate. Reg, I don’t want us to be enemies, but you’re not exactly being compassionate here. I’ve been going through some stuff, yeah? And yes, The Left Hand is a big part of it. You should be aware of that, buddy. You should be concerned. This is an X-Treme Rules match. That means anything goes! That means, both you and I, should expect The Left Hand to interrupt our, how did you call it… bloody mess? Don’t tempt them with a good time, man! That’s totally up their alley! It’s damn near a given that we’re both going to have to deal with them now. Thanks for that.

In preparation for that, ask yourself, Reg - what side will you be on when they come for you?

I hope it’s the right one.”

I raise my right hand, and twinkle my gloved fingers.

“What do you think motivated me to gun for Tula, Reg? What got me across the line where your boytoys weren’t able to?”

I cover my mouth in shock.

“Oops! I wasn’t supposed to sink that low. I mean, it seemed okay for you to talk about Corey like that but your own glass house of a ménage à trois should be ignored, right? My bad.

Remember your words, bud.

Context matters.

Like the context of Tula joining up with The Left Hand. That was my motivation. That was what drove me. The desire to right what’s wrong. It’s what’s driving me against you, as well. I’ve already explained my big picture plan, I don’t need to hide that.”


“I’m driven for something beyond just a single match. That’s my context. And if you’re not driven, like you keep on hinting at - if you don’t want to be champion - well I’ll be happy to take the burden from your shoulders.

Get it, ‘happy’?”

I feign a laugh, slapping my thigh in mockery.

“You seem to think that I’m a bit of a sad sack. I’m sorry that you feel like I’ve been dragging you down. You don’t seem to get it though. I just ate ice cream with Corey freaking Smith, why would I want to blow my brains out now? This is my happy face! Better still, I’m surviving. If I wanted to ‘blow my brains out’, I’d just let The Left Hand have me.

Instead I fight.

And if that’s inspiring to people, well shit, that’s got me stumped too. I mean… I guess Milan applauded me, but I think it’s a bit of stretch to say anyone is really following me. I’m not much of a leader, nor a hero. I appreciate you saying I am though.

I appreciate you.”

I pause, earnestly willing my love through the camera. I hope that Reggie feels it.

“I appreciate you for being your own man. ο Δίας knows that one of me is more than enough for the world. But you? Nobody owns you. Fantastic. We need more people like you. You might not want to be like me, but Reg, I kind of wish that I was like you. I wish I didn’t have that luxury taken from me. But this is the… hand… I was dealt.

People like you might be able to ignore the world around them, but the context of my life is firmly intertwined out there - in the world. Where my history is - my previous exploits as a dumbass in a suit might call them. So I’ll keep talking about that context, that history. I won’t hide it. I won’t hide at all. I won’t run from challenges, or challengers. And look, maybe that does make me slow; maybe you’re right and I don’t know what I’m getting myself into with you. Maybe, just maybe, I will end up in a bodybag after you’re through with me. But if The Left Hand couldn’t do it… do you really think you can?

Those are some pretty bold threats you’re laying out there, Reg: bloody me, brutalise me, kill me. I mean… the first two are kind of a given. What XWF match doesn’t end in blood these days, and isn’t brutality kind of the whole point? But death…

I’m not going to kill you, Reg.

You don’t deserve that.

And I’m not heartless, despite what you think.

After all, the only crimes that you’ve committed are against the English language.”

So much for The Love.

“I’m going to do what I can to learn some lessons from you. You’re a survivor too - two months is nothing to turn my nose up at, so I’ll adopt the things that helped you. I’ll heed your warnings of your prior experiences and not fall into the double duty trap. Thanks for sharing that.

In return, I’ve got something to share with you too. See, those introspective questions you think I’ve been asking myself, I have the answers now.

‘Why aren’t I free from my own mental warfare?’

Because I built my own damn cage and forgot where I put the key. But I know where it is: you’ve got it. Or the key to the key, anyway.

‘When will I stop eating left hands and turn the other cheek?’

Never. Also, metaphors bro. Do you understand them?

‘What will become of my destiny?’

That one’s easy.

The X-Treme Championship.

Hope that helps.”

---

2E: Postscript

“Does he have it?”

“Yes.”

“How did he receive it?”

“Who knows how he processes anything?”

“You think he will do it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That will make our job a lot easier.”